Status Report - 2017.09.20 - File Submission Begins
over 7 years ago – Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 01:56:50 AM

Print File Submissions  

It has been a long journey but Brass is finally nearing production. We have passed the manufacturer's deadline of September 10th by 10 days as of right now. We will be ready for production by early next week. While it is unfortunate that we busted through this deadline, it is important to us to ensure that everything is pixel-perfect.  We will have a finalized production and delivery schedule hopefully in the next few updates.  If all goes according to plan, we are looking at a February 2018 delivery.  

When the graphical rulebooks are complete, we will release the final draft to the community for download.

Rulebook Translation

We are blown away with the level of enthusiasm the community has shown.   We have received nearly 100 people interested in helping with translation.  The resumes of many of these translators are impressive to say the least.   We have hired skilled professional translators for French, German and Spanish so far and we are in the midst of hiring some for the Italian language also.  

Thank you so much to everyone who has shown interest in helping with translations!  

Card Backs

Below are the card backs for the Brass deck.  This design was created by Mr Cuddington, and I (Gavan) have given it some graphic design love, creating a foil design effect.

 

Player Aids 

Below are the player aids that we have created.  We wanted the player aids to be useful not only to new players, but also to seasoned Brass veterans.  As such, we have included the basics on side 1, such as an action list with very basic descriptions of each action.  On side 2 we display a full break down of the card distributions based on player count.  

On the Lancashire player aid, the distributions reference Roxley's 2017 rules, with one exception: we also listing the 2 player community variant card distribution.  

 

Survey Lockdown  

We will not be locking down the surveys until after the files are submitted, so you still have a chance to modify your orders for another few weeks. We are still looking to charge people for their outstanding balances in early October.   We will send an update before we lock the survey to notify everyone when it is happening.

Characters  

Each update we will feature the profile of another one of the Characters featured on the Brass turn order tiles. Beautifully painted by Damien Mammolitti.

From Wikipedia:

"

Eleanor Coade (3 June 1733 – 16 November 1821) was a British businesswoman known for manufacturing Neoclassical statues, architectural decorations and garden ornaments made of "Lithodipyra" (Coade stone) for over 50 years from 1769 until her death. She should not be confused with her mother, also named Eleanor.  

Lithodipyra ("stone fired twice") was a high-quality, durable moulded weather-resistant, ceramic stoneware; statues and decorative features from this still look almost new today. Coade did not invent 'artificial stone', as various inferior quality precursors had been both patented and manufactured over the previous forty years, but she likely perfected both the clay recipe and the firing process.  

She combined high-quality manufacturing and artistic taste, together with entrepreneurial, business and marketing skills, to create the overwhelmingly successful stone products of her age. She produced stoneware for St George's Chapel, Windsor; The Royal Pavilion, Brighton; Carlton House, London and the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Shortly after her death, her company produced a large quantity of stoneware used in the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace.

"

As always, if you have any comments or questions, please email [email protected]

Keep rollin' sixes,

Gavan Brown & Team Roxley

Status Report - 2017.09.06 - Day & Night, Continuing Prepress
over 7 years ago – Thu, Sep 07, 2017 at 01:51:52 AM

TL;DR - We continue to work incredibly hard towards our deadline for submitting the print files by the end of this weekend. Birmingham Day map and player boards revealed below.  Survey lock down delayed until mid September.  

Hurricane Harvey Donation

At Roxley, we have been inspired by the courage and generosity from those in the gaming community toward the victims of Hurricane Harvey.  We have decided to step up and do our part by donating $2,000 toward the relief efforts.   If you are interested in donating as well, be sure to visit redcross.org  

To all our backers in Florida and the Caribbean, we are thinking about you and your families and hope this weekend ends with your safety.

Lancashire 2 Player Community Map

While we recommend playing our improved 2 player rules with the regular map, we will as promised be including the classic 2 player community variant on the back side of the board.  

 

Birmingham Bonus Day Map

As an added bonus, we will be including a "day" map on the back side of the Birmingham map as well!  Both day and night side will be included on the board of all copies of Brass: Birmingham.   

 

To go with the day map, we will also double side the player mats with a day and night board.  The location cards will of course will of course still feature the night art on them only.  

Prepress Preparation

We are working all week on preparing the remaining files for print.  There are still some graphic design tweaks to be done here and there and of course preparing all of the print files to our manufacturer's specifications.

Survey Lockdown

We will not be locking down the surveys until after the files are submitted, so you still have a chance to modify your orders for another few weeks.   We are still looking to charge people for their outstanding balances in early October.

Characters

Each update we will feature the profile of another one of the Characters featured on the Brass turn order tiles. Beautifully painted by Damien Mammolitti.

 From Wikipedia:

"

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (April 1806 – 15 September 1859), was an English mechanical and civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", "one of the 19th century engineering giants", and "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, who changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions".  Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. 

His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering. Though Brunel's projects were not always successful, they often contained innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. During his career, Brunel achieved many engineering firsts, including assisting in the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river and development of SS Great Britain, the first propeller-driven, ocean-going, iron ship, which, when built in 1843, was the largest ship ever built.

"

As always, if you have any comments or questions, please email [email protected] 

Keep rollin' sixes, 

Gavan Brown & Team Roxley

Status Report - 2017.08.23 - Gen Con 50 & Working Toward Manufacturing
over 7 years ago – Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 01:40:39 AM

 TL;DR - Short update this week, as we need every spare moment we can muster to continue to work toward submitting the print files to the manufacturer on Sept 10. Gen Con 50 was a blast.   

Characters  

Each update we will feature the profile of another one of the Characters featured on the Brass turn order tiles. Beautifully painted by Damien Mammolitti.  Apologies we did not feature one last week!  We return to our regularly scheduled program. :)

From Wikipedia:

"

George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement. Self-help advocate Samuel Smiles particularly praised his achievements. His rail gauge of 4 feet 8 1⁄2 inches (1,435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the standard gauge by name and by convention for most of the world's railways.  

Pioneered by Stephenson, rail transport was one of the most important technological inventions of the 19th century and a key component of the Industrial Revolution. Built by George and his son Robert's company Robert Stephenson and Company, the Locomotion No. 1 is the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. George also built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use locomotives, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which opened in 1830.

"

Stephenson's Rocket will also be featured on the front side of the loan indicator tile!  See Damien's awesome work below! 

Gen Con 50

Our last week was consumed entirely by Gen Con 50.  This was Roxley's first time at Gen Con and it was a blast!  We met a ton of Roxley fans as well as lots of industry folks.  We were selling Super Motherload, Steampunk Rally and Santorini at our booth.  We sold out of nearly everything!   

We were also showing off the prototype board for Lancashire (the same one used in Heavy Cardboard's play through).  Manny and Nate of Dice Throne were also helping us at the booth and demoing Dice Throne for the masses.

It was a lot of work and a lot of stress, but a whole lot of fun!  We can't wait to do it all again next year!  A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by to say hello! 

As always, if you have any comments or questions, please email [email protected]  

Keep rollin' sixes,  

Gavan Brown & Team Roxley

Status Report - 2017.08.09 - Surveys Sent & Manufacturing Deadline Finalized
over 7 years ago – Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 12:17:21 AM

TL;DR - Surveys have all been sent out. We have established a drop dead date for all graphics files to be delivered to the manufacturer of September 10.  We will be at Gen Con next week!  

Deadline Updates - After discussion with the manufacturer, we have updated the print file submission deadline to September 10.  Ideally we will be able to deliver them quicker, but this gives us a bit more time to ensure that everything is pixel perfect.

Brass Production

The edited rule books are complete.  Those were huge beasts.  A Huge thank you to our editors, especially Simon Rourke, who has put a massive amount of time into them. Gavan is the process of doing the graphical layout for the rules in In Design.  This is the largest remaining task before getting the print files to the manufacturer.  

We've also been continuing to refine the boards adding the color banner system mentioned in the last update.

Iron Clays

A few things to note.  First, Iron Clays have been a huge hit as add ons to the survey.  We are so happy everyone likes what they see and we will do our very best to make them as amazing as we can.

Second, we made a typographical error in regards to the chip distribution in the "Set of 100 Iron Clays" description.  In the survey, which said it included 20 10s and 10 20s.   The correct distribution is actually 10 10s and 20 20s (still totaling 100 chips). A set of Iron Clays has a bank size of 1640.  It also better supports making change to and from 100 chips in a 4 player game.  This correction has been reflected in the BackerKit FAQ here.   We realize the rendering suggests there are 20 10s and 10 20s.  We will remedy this as soon as Mr Cuddington is back from Vacation!

Third, an update on the production.  We are getting the final CAD files to the manufacturer by the end of the week.  From there they will be creating molds using a CNC machine.  

Surveys

So far 87% of you have filled out your surveys.  Thanks so much for doing it this quickly!  You are all amazing!  We will be locking surveys down early September 1, so if you need to add or remove anything, you can do so.

Didn't receive your survey?

A few people have reported that they did not receive a survey by email.  If you have not received your survey, ensure that it did not go into your spam or updates folder in your email.  If you still can't find it, please fill out this form and we'll send your survey to you via Kickstarter message.  

Gen Con Reminder

Heading to Gen Con this year?  We will be at #2753 (Entrepreneur's Avenue), Hall G.  Come say hi!   We will be sharing the booth with our friends from Mind Bottling Games, the creators of Dice Throne!  (Which is an awesome game you should check out!) 

As always, if you have any comments or questions, please email [email protected]  

Keep rollin' sixes,  

Team Roxley

Newsflash - Surveys Ready To Launch!
over 7 years ago – Thu, Aug 03, 2017 at 12:44:12 AM

Team Roxley has finished setting up the BackerKit surveys.   Before the survey is sent out however, BackerKit requires that it is reviewed and approved by one of their staff members to ensure that we have not made any errors in the setup.

We hope to have approval from BackerKit within 24 hours.  When we receive approval to launch, we will send out the survey immediately.

Once We Launch

Shortly after we launch the surveys you’ll receive an email from us with a special link to your BackerKit survey. It’s important to respond to your survey as quickly as you can since we need this information to fulfill your rewards.

You don’t need to create a BackerKit account to fill out your survey. When you receive the email with the survey, click the survey link to respond. Answer the questions about your reward preferences, provide shipping information, and purchase add-on items if you like. 

You don’t have access to this survey link yet, but it will be available soon via email!

Forget to order something? No problem!

After you respond to your survey, you can go back later and change your responses at any time before we close the surveys and get our final counts.

If you need to review your information or pledge status, you can return to your survey by clicking the link in your survey email or requesting your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page at https://brassgame.backerkit.com

If you used your Facebook credentials to log in to your Kickstarter account, the BackerKit survey is sent to the email address you use for your Facebook account. If you have another email address that you prefer to use, please contact support at https://brassgame.backerkit.com/faq

As always, if you have any comments or questions, please email [email protected]  

Keep rollin' sixes,  

Team Roxley